To the End of the Road
by TheRavenBlade
Summary: Duck couldn't walk. Duck could barely talk. Everything hurt. But Duck could certainly listen. Clementine was right there, and she'd be there when this was all over, since heroes never died. And if Duck fancied himself or his friend as anything, it was as the best heroes ever. One-shot, pre-Duck's death. Cluck if you squint, but not necessarily.


**A/N: Soooo... The last one-shot I made for these two got more reviews than I'd anticipated. Given that while doting my narcissism, I noted that there were reoccurring requests to type more, I promptly decided, "why the hell not". Thus, this was written in one sitting, and thus, we've arrived to our current story.**

**I don't have much to say. It's been a long time since doing a playthrough of the Long Road Ahead, and I hear the show/comics(which I ain't watched/read) go into more detail about what a bite is like, so if I got any details wrong about the scenes, I apologise in advance, and feel free to point 'em out. : )**

**Also, allow me to destroy all potential drama by saying I wrote the entire thing to Golden Years by David Bowie on a loop. Yeah.**

**Walking Dead is obviously not mine.**

It burned.

God, like a bunch of miniature suns laughing inside his flesh, it ravaged and spurned out through his nerves. A bicycle chain ripping through sinew, stray cogs nicking through marrow, all while housing ovens within the microscopic metal that flared with their inhuman fahrenheits. With every slide of his muscles, every kiss from within his shirt, the blemish, the _thing_, the kiss from the Reaper's disgusting mouth took a moment to alight and sear away.  
He couldn't scream. He could barely whimper. He was too tired.  
It came with a ravaging wavelength that sent goosebumps – chunks of lava erupting from the disease flooding his bloodstream all over his surface. Was the bite spreading along his skin, or was he simply losing himself in the rumpled wound? He felt his mouth become as dry as Titan, his spit stick down to his tongue in congested wads.

_Maybe... I could be a mind-reader... ...like Saturn Girl... _he thought at the idea of Saturn's primary, desert-like moon. His neck sagged.

Like silk, pruned fingertips pushed through his scalp. Duck's eyes fought the membrane stitching them together, and a chubby face waited for him when he succeeded to peel them apart. Blonde hair and worn eyes waited, all in streamlined gunk that meshed the features together. The arc of her lips wasn't without a choke, but it made him calm, almost peaceful as he sunk in the fat of her arms. Pained, but calm.

_Hi, mom._

"Are you doing alright, Duck?" Katjaa whispered, tracing his head.

"_H...Hhhhungry,"_ he replied. Thirsty, too, but the empty bottle resting by the log was a memento for the last hour he'd spent licking the plastic for residual droplets. They had no more. And he didn't want his tongue to hurt worse.

His mother grimaced, and she fastened him close. She looked over at the friendly old guy with them. Duck liked him. Couldn't remember his name. But he'd been nice.

"You wouldn't happen to..." his mother began, but the gent shook his old head.

"Nope," he replied. He seemed upset. "'Was my last box of crackers."

His mother was sighing until a new voice joined.

"Um..."

Duck forced his skull to loll at the direction of this new speaker, and felt something stir. Something he dared claim as kinda good.

Crust smudged her dress. It obscured her face, her eyes, the fidgeting of her digits, the ball cap, her springy locks, the dirt on her limbs. There was such muck, he couldn't perceive how her forehead would imitate an elder's whenever he spooked her, or what rate she would nod whenever he talked out Supes', and Ironman, and the Justice League, and Teen Titans, or all his other heroes. He couldn't tell whether she was happy or sad from how bright the amber irises were, or how confident she was with an idea after her eyes would creep off to the side for a second or two. But his ears still registered Clem's voice just fine, so that was nice.

Her toes crunched along the seas of red vegetation to his side, and paused when she reached. Faded bright-pink sticks at her side straightened against the ghostly body, a breeze stumbled through the cloth folds at her knees like a spectre's tail.

"...I still have a few animal crackers..." she spoke, taking ruffled, plastic bag out of her hoodie to reveal a handful of tanned lumps to them. They slipped around in the vapour of her palm.

A movement of yellow informed him his mother had tilted her head. "You don't have to, Clementine..." she spoke.

"Um, it's okay," she protested, pushing them forward. "I'm okay, really."

His mother removed an arm from Duck's body – Duck shut his eyes at the pain – and retrieved the snack from Clementine.

"Thank you so much, Clementine," his mother told her. Her voice rang clear, but it seemed stuck on something – like there was some kinda chicken bone in her vocal chords, or some such thing holding back a wellspring of emotional honesty. "You're... You're a very sweet girl, you know that?"

A, 'mm-hmm,' seeped through his mind. He liked Clem's voice.

"...Can I talk to Duck?"

Duck peered at the younger child's silhouette.

"Do you want to talk to Clementine, Duck?"

"_...Uh-huh,"_ he rasped to the two, doing what he could to make the dough in his neck nod right.

He felt his mother sit him up – Duck chewed his lip – and soon he was positioned upright on her knee, to stare right at Clem. She was taller as a smudge than a girl. Trees swayed with her in a tribal dance, and the wind tugged her away with every shift of the membrane on his retinas. It made him sad that he couldn't tell what she was feeling. But then she started talking, which was okay.

"I... Read the Legion of Superheroes comics you had, and the Teen Titan one and the three Batman ones... I liked them. I did," she murmured. Brownish-pale blurbs poked each other in front of the pink. "I liked Beast Boy, Starfire and Super Boy the best, I think. Batman, too, but he's a bit scary."

Batman wasn't scary, silly Clem. Batman was a superhero. Superheroes were always nice deep down.

Not like Walkers, he pondered as his mother fed him crackers.

"I... I... The Dominators are really mean," Clem went on, rambling, almost like he used to, "I wish you had the next issue, because this one ended on a cliff-hanger..."

Duck felt upset. He couldn't remember the next issue. Strange, he used to able to recite several issues by heart.

"...And yeah," Clem concluded, pushing her hair back. "...Um... ...Who's your favourite, Duck?"

His mother stroked his hair. "Who's your favourite superhero, Duck?" she asked.

Duck looked at the greys and whites and smothered light circulating above his head. Mucus stuck on his throat, and he felt like sleeping right there.

"_...Supergirl,"_ he answered.

"...I thought you said it was Supes..." Clem responded.

Duck let out a string of coughs. _"He's favourite, too..."_

His mother held his waist. He liked her constant hold, it made him feel like he'd be alright. "Are... Are you tired, Duck?"

"_Yeah..."_

A flurry of movement happened between the two. "Clementine, I think Duck needs some sleep."

"Alright."

Duck contemplated how long it would be when he would wake up, how strong he'd be, how much it would all hurt. An optimistic voice piped up, reminding him heroes pretty much always left alive. As shapes and figments traced through clouded thought processes, his mind bound itself to an anchor and began plummeting.

In his last few seconds, out a crack in the shadows, he saw rings of amber glisten, before he submitted to the anvil and its crushing weight on his humanity.

A final thought roamed by. His good friend, of course. Clean clothes, no wounds. A unique look on her slightly tanned visage – a small arc joined by a titter. His father followed, holding a big fish on their motor-boat in the middle of the big, blue body. He was smiling, too.

Everyone was smiling.

_You'll all be there when I wake up, won't ya...?_


End file.
